MEXICO CITY | Sun Nov 4, 2012 8:03pm EST MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The viral global success of South Korean pop singer Psy's "Gangnam Style" video stems from the "three C's" -- a combination of virtues that Seoul's finance minister says can spur the country's traditionally sleepy service sector. "Cooperation, competition and creativity -- these three Cs ar...

By Piya Sinha-Roy and Ronald Grover LOS ANGELES | Sun Nov 4, 2012 3:50pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney's animated film about a videogame character who destroys everything in his path, scored the highest-grossing opening weekend in Disney animation history with $49.1 million, as box office attendance picked up in the afterma...

By Chris Michaud NEW YORK | Fri Nov 2, 2012 9:06pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi joined Sting, Christina Aguilera and other music stars on Friday in a televised benefit concert to raise funds for victims of Sandy, the giant storm that killed more th...

By Andrea Burzynski NEW YORK | Fri Nov 2, 2012 6:34pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some people liken a bad day at work to being in a war zone but for the photojournalists chronicled in HBO's upcoming documentary series "Witness," that's not an exaggeration. The series, which premieres on November 5 and will air every Monday for the rest of the month,...

The President of the Republic of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, will be one of the thousands who will be at the Lady Gaga concert offered this Saturday at the National Stadium. The information was confirmed this afternoon by Viva Don Stockwell, representative of the production company for the concert RPMTV. Stockwell said the president will be in the area of the Presidential box. Chinchil...

By Jill Serjeant LOS ANGELES | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:17am EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Why learn French when you could learn Klingon? The language created more than 30 years ago for the "Star Trek" race of long-haired warriors has moved boldly into pop culture where few other alien tongues have gone before.With a new book about the classic Klingon sta...

By Vernell Hackett NASHVILLE, Tennessee | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:15am EDT NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - Blake Shelton dominated the Country Music Association awards on Thursday, taking home three trophies, including the coveted entertainer of the year prize, on country music's biggest night. Shelton, 36, whose popularity has rocketed since he beca...

By Eric Kelsey LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:27pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Los Angeles judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by the one-time confidante of pop star Britney Spears, ruling there was insufficient evidence to go forward with the trial on allegations of defamation, assault and breach of contract. "I really thought long and hard...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 8:44pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - R&B singer Chris Brown was given the go-ahead to carry out his European tour after a Los Angeles judge said on Thursday that the entertainer was "in compliance" with probation imposed for his 2009 assault on former girlfriend Rihanna. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg ha...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 7:17pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Double-Oscar winner Jodie Foster will receive a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes ceremony in January, recognizing her 40-year career as an actress, director and movie producer, organizers said on Thursday. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which organizes the an...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 6:32pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Mitch Lucker, the lead singer of extreme heavy metal band Suicide Silence, died on Thursday of injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in Huntington Beach, California, police said. The band from Southern California was given the Golden Gods award for best new talent by Revolver magazine ...

NEW YORK | Thu Nov 1, 2012 6:27pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi will join Sting and other top music stars on Friday for a special television benefit concert on NBC to aid victims of Sandy, the giant storm that killed scores and devastated large sections of the U.S. Northeast. The Walt Disney Co meanwhile a...

By Nicola Leske NEW YORK | Thu Nov 1, 2012 6:14pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp said on Thursday about half of its 3.3 million customers in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey area had lost power in the wake of superstorm Sandy, causing widespread disruptions to its service. Cablevision said in a statement ...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 4:29pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Francis Lawrence has signed on to direct the final two installments of the hit movie "The Hunger Games," movie studio Lionsgate said on Thursday. The announcement follows months of rumors that Lionsgate might go with a different director to helm the "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay," - the fin...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 3:17pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Khloe Kardashian's first outing as the new co-host of "The X Factor" helped boost the show's audience by 30 percent, yet the reality star got mixed reviews for a nipple-baring debut that made headlines - but many TV critics found awkward. Kardashian, 28, best known for starring with sociali...

MUMBAI | Thu Nov 1, 2012 2:38pm EDT MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Playboy club is coming to India -- but with "bunnies" in non-revealing outfits. "The costumes of the bunnies, who are integral to the Playboy culture, will be based on Indian sensibilities and morals," Sanjay Gupta, CEO of PB Lifestyle, which is bringing the brand to India through a licensing agr...

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON | Thu Nov 1, 2012 2:29pm EDT BOSTON (Reuters) - Rhode Island is suing former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and the former head of the state's economic development agency over a $75 million loan guarantee the agency made to the baseball player's failed video game company 38 Studios. The suit was filed in Superior Cou...

By Madeline Chambers BERLIN | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:03am EDT BERLIN (Reuters) - Erwin Rommel, the World War Two German field marshal celebrated as the brilliant and humane "Desert Fox", is portrayed in a new film as a weak man torn by his loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the dawning realization that he was serving a devil. The drama, due to be broadcast o...

By Elaine Lies TOKYO | Thu Nov 1, 2012 7:32am EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Justin Cronin was writing literary fiction when he and his daughter, then eight, dreamed up a vampire trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world just for fun - until he belatedly realized what they'd put together, and sat down to write. Cronin said he's still a little astonished by ...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 5:46am EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer-composer Bill Dees, best known for his songwriting collaboration with Roy Orbison on the hits "Oh, Pretty Woman" and "It's Over," has died at age 73 in Mountain Home, Arkansas, according to an obituary posted online by a local funeral home. Dees, a Texas native who got his start in t...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 1, 2012 2:10am EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Aunt Rosemary was not George Clooney's only famous relative. You can add a certain Civil War American president to the Oscar-winning actor's family tree. Politics has apparently run in the activist actor's blood for centuries, as website Ancestry.com on Thursday revealed that the "Ocean's 1...

LOS ANGELES | Wed Oct 31, 2012 8:40pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood actress Evan Rachel Wood has quietly married Briton Jamie Bell - star of the 2000 "Billy Elliot" dance movie - in a ceremony in California, Wood's spokeswoman said on Wednesday. "The bride wore a custom dress by Carolina Herrera. It was a small ceremony with close family and frie...

LOS ANGELES | Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:25pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The desk where Bram Stoker wrote his famed 1897 book "Dracula" is going up for auction next month after having been restored and turned into a work of art, auction company Profiles in History said on Wednesday. The desk, which will be auctioned off by the California company on December 15 ...

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES | Wed Oct 31, 2012 2:51pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rapper and music producer RZA is best known as the leader of the hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan which also includes such popular members as Method Man, Ghostface Killah and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. RZA branched out into film, taking on small acting roles and scor...

By Shilpa Jamkhandikar MUMBAI | Wed Oct 31, 2012 9:13am EDT MUMBAI (Reuters) - Suraj Sharma went from being a regular teenager growing up in New Delhi to starring in Ang Lee's big-screen adaptation of the bestselling novel "Life of Pi". The 17-year-old Sharma was picked from more than 3,000 hopefuls to play Pi, an Indian boy who finds himself str...

NEW YORK | Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:37am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - If you hate having your picture taken, you're in good company - British supermodel Kate Moss does as well. "I'm terrible at a snapshot. Terrible. I blink all the time. I've got facial Tourette's," she told Vanity Fair in the December issue, out on Wednesday.Moss, who has graced countless magazin...

By Russ Blinch TORONTO | Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:33am EDT TORONTO (Reuters) - A humorist, travel writer and novelist who penned a fictional tale about the inner workings of Nigerian email scams won Canada's most prestigious and lucrative literary prize on Tuesday. Will Ferguson won the C$50,000 ($50,000) Scotiabank Giller prize for his novel "419," pu...

By Piya Sinha-Roy and Jill Serjeant LOS ANGELES | Tue Oct 30, 2012 10:03pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For years, it seemed like another "Star Wars" movie was just a dream, stillborn in a galaxy far, far away. But down on Earth, the Walt Disney movie studio had different ideas, announcing on Tuesday that it planned not one but at least three new ...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Tue Oct 30, 2012 9:48pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Country-pop star Taylor Swift's latest album "Red" has notched up the highest first week U.S. sales figures in a decade. According to Nielsen SoundScan figures, "Red" sold 1.2 million copies in its first week of release, giving Swift her biggest debut numbers in a...

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY | Tue Oct 30, 2012 5:49pm EDT VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - If anyone thinks the Vatican newspaper is still a staid broadsheet that publishes only religious news and harsh papal edicts, consider this: On Tuesday it ran not one but five articles about the new James Bond film. "Skyfall" gets a rave review in l'Osservatore...

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES | Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:56pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian Sarah Silverman has built her career largely on raunchy jokes about sex and other decidedly adult topics. So it may come as a surprise that a woman famous for an R-rated song about sleeping with actor Matt Damon and for pro-Obama viral videos is now voicing...

By Stephanie Pett and Paul Casciato LONDON | Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:54pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Photography's artistic roots are laid bare in a new show which brings historical paintings, early photographs and contemporary pictures together in a new show at Britain's National Gallery. "Seduced by Art: Photography Past & Present" explores how phot...

By Michael Roddy LONDON | Tue Oct 30, 2012 12:05pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - London dance house Sadler's Wells will mark the centenary of the riotous premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" with a commission that uses neither the original music or scandalous choreography, opting instead for a piece inspired by it. Olympics op...

LONDON | Tue Oct 30, 2012 11:41am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood is engaged to be married to a 34-year-old theatre producer named Sally Humphreys, his spokesperson said on Tuesday. The twice-married, 65-year-old musician and artist separated from his second wife Jo Wood in 2008 and had a public disagreement with her over the ...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Oct 29, 2012 6:21pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Animated TV comedy satire "South Park" is taking aim at a disgraced icon who seems a lot like seven-time Tour de France winning cyclist Lance Armstrong. In a teaser clip released on Monday by Comedy Central, an episode titled "A Scause for Applause" shows residents of the fictional America...

For all of you who have lived in and around Costa Rica for awhile now, you have undoubtedly experienced water skiing, jet skies, surfing, and other water sports. While, make sure you are sitting when you read the rest of this, imagine flying under water with a totally new water sport experience called, SUBWING. SUBWING is a product invented by 20 year old Simon Sivertsen during a sail t...

By Grzegorz Szymanowski and Christian Lowe WARSAW | Mon Oct 29, 2012 5:41pm EDT WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Supreme Court opened the way on Monday for a blasphemy verdict against a rock musician who tore up a Bible on stage, a case that has pitted deep Catholic traditions against a new desire for free expression. Adam Darski, front man with a hea...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Mon Oct 29, 2012 5:19pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After almost a decade in which torture films dominated the box office, horror movies are returning to ghostly thrills with a new slew of low-budget productions making big money for studios. The success of 2009's "Paranormal Activity" - which was made for $15,000 a...

NEW YORK | Mon Oct 29, 2012 5:17pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anderson Cooper's venture into daytime is coming to an end after just two seasons after failing to find an audience in the crowded daytime talk show market. Warner Bros Television, which syndicates "Anderson", said on Monday the show will not be renewed after the current season ends in the summe...

Recently The Costa Rica Star was emailed a photograph of a man hand fishing in Costa Rica. We shared this photograph on our Facebook page, and it received a good amount of comments and sharing. What we did not know is that this photograph was not the property of the person who emailed it to us, it was in fact the property of Adam Allegro (pictured above), who was recently in Costa Rica catchin...